by Brook Wilder
“Nice to meet you, James.”
I intend to let her go after that. This was the only interaction that I needed to have with Lena—a brief night where I poured her drinks on her dead boyfriend’s birthday and drove her home because she had no other safe way to get there. But as I watch her start to stumble up to her home, something moves me forward to catch her before she can fall.
She’s light; it’s like she barely has weight to her. Her fingers cling to my shirt and I catch her gaze in the moonlight.
“Can… can you walk me inside?”
That one request unmakes me, and it has me doing yet another thing that’s against my self-imposed female solitude: I don’t take women to their front door. Yet I do it for Lena. I ration out that I good man—a man that was raised by my father—wouldn’t let her stumble up there on her own, possibly hurt herself. In reality, I think a part of me just doesn’t want to let her go. There’s a tenderness that reminds me of…
I stop the thought and lead her up the way. She leans into my side and I keep her pressed close without reservation. We make our way up the small steps and she fumbles in her purse for her keys. Lena manages to unlock her door as she steps over the threshold, she looks back to me.
“Would you like some coffee before you leave?”
I should say no to her.
I need to say no to her.
She’s a woman, a Viper, a stranger.
And yet…
Chapter Four
Lena
He’s not what I expected.
He’s big… He’s handsome… I can see why any woman would have her eyes and her heart set on him. I expected him to be rugged and maybe a bit violent on the side and definitely not as… chivalrous and even hesitant as he’s been to interact with me. He hasn’t even put a move on me, not even playing this drunk role that I’ve taken on; most men would have by now.
James has got these eyes. Dark, sad eyes I almost find myself drowning in, until I remind myself that I’m seducing him, not the other way around.
I make him coffee. He stays by close in my trailer, sitting at the dining table with me just a few feet away. He gives me looks that he doesn’t allow to linger, and there’s a masochistic part of me that wishes he’d let them.
“You live here by yourself?” he asks me.
“Yeah.” I stand by the coffee maker, watching as the pot fills with fresh coffee. “It’s just me. Maybe a cat at some point. After Marcel died I’ve… Been alone.”
“I get that.”
I bite my lip. My stomach sinks as I think about where to take this conversation, knowing that I shouldn’t exploit this but…
“James Davis, you said?” I start to pour his coffee, adding cream and sugar. “You… you lost your fiancée.”
He nods, takes the coffee as I slide it to him.
“Few months back. Car accident.”
James doesn’t say anymore. He drinks his coffee quietly, that darkness settling in his brooding eyes as he does so. He’s lonely. I can tell, because I’m lonely too. Maybe in another lifetime we’d have bonded for real over our mutual loneliness. But tonight…
I leave the coffee pot to walk over to him. He’s lost in his cup, staring into the piping brown liquid contemplatively. Slow, I slide my fingers over his. He looks up to me, almost cautious—as if I could hurt him.
“It’s hard being lonely,” I say. “Especially when you loved someone.”
I draw closer to him, putting myself in his space. I trail my fingers from his hands up his arms… And while he’s watching me I slide into his lap, thighs spread wide. James is still, like he doesn’t know what to do with me, which allows me to take the lead.
His face is warm in my hands as I pull it toward me. When I kiss him, I taste on his tongue the beer he nursed through the night, and the remnants of a clove cigarette. He tastes like a man, and I deepen the kiss, sighing against his mouth as he slowly, tentatively responds.
James’ teeth come down on my lip, light as they worry it, before he completely covers my mouth with his. His tongue slides along, begging entrance I allow. He kisses like a man that hasn’t touched someone in years and I suppose, on some level, that’s probably true. It’s probably felt like years to him, since he lost his fiancé, but his hands come to my waist and hold me tight and I know that he’s needed this nonetheless.
I breathe him in and something clicks for me. It feels good. Being with a man hasn’t felt good in a while. Of course, enjoying this means that it’s not going to last forever. He pulls away from me and shakes his head; his eyes don’t meet mine.
“We shouldn’t,” he says. “You’re—I just came here to drop you off. You’ve been drinking, and I shouldn’t be doing this with you…”
“Please.” I lean forward and nuzzle against his nose. “Please. I’m lonely… aren’t you lonely too?”
It’s not really a lie. I’m surrounded by people every day, but not one of them knows me… not like I’d like them too. The truth in it just makes telling James that it’s so that much easier. I see in his eyes that he believes me. Something held back breaks inside him.
He kisses me as he hoists me up. He’s as strong as he looks and keeps kissing me as he carries me to the bedroom in the back of the trailer. My heart races, my breathing is heavy. The only question that remains is whether it’s because I’m nervous or excited.
I honestly can’t tell.
James tosses me to the bed. I bounce on it, legs knock-kneed as I lean back on my arms, looking up at him. I bite my lip; men love it when I bite my lip. A muscle jumps in his jaw and he stalks toward me. If I thought Marc was a predator, I’d been wrong; this man before me keeps me, his prey, rooted on the spot as his hands grip my knees and push my thighs apart.
I’m not wearing underwear, and I can tell the moment he realizes that I’m not. His eyes darken, and he takes in a breath, flicking his eyes up to me.
I want to say something, and so does he, but I think we both know it’ll break the illusion we’ve both got going if we do. Instead, I start undoing the buttons of my shirt, one by one. He follows the movement of my fingers with rapt attention, moving higher up on the bed the more I expose myself to him. He’s pressed hard between my legs once the last button pops and I lay back on the bed with him looming over me.
He doesn’t frighten me. I expected to be, but I’m not. Despite the ruse this is, I feel the excitement pool between my legs, and the ache that’s with it surprises me. Tentatively, as if experiencing my sexuality for the first time, I roll my hips against his.
“Oh…”
The fabric against my bare sex makes my toes curl, and I do it again and again, feeling him get harder as I do. I touch myself, let him see that I’m enjoying how it feels but…
“More.”
It’s the only word I speak to him. He leans down, capturing me in a hungry kiss that steals my breath. More is exactly what James gives me, slipping his hand between my thighs and his fingers over my clit. The sound I make—God, I swear I’ve never made that sound before, so high and near whimpered.
I rock against his hand, dripping wet quicker than I’m used to. His thumb caresses my clit as his fingers probe, sliding gently into me, like he’s trying not to hurt me. The care and caution make me feel guilty, make me think he’s not a bad man. In honesty, he’s probably not, but I remind myself that’s not the point.
I reach between us as he’s got his fingers in me, undoing the button of his jeans and tugging down his zipper. I want him in my hands, I want to touch him, I want to make him moan. When I get my hand around his thick length, he does just that.
“Oh, fuck…”
He growls the word, fuck, and my walls tighten around his fingers in response. Our hands move in tandem with each other; precum drips over my fingers and I whine. I want him inside me.
He’s bucking against my hand by now, and I know he’s close as I am.
“Fuck me…” I groan. “Please, I want it.”
Whatev
er reservations he had earlier, they’re gone with my request. He pulls his fingers from me, sliding them into my hands as he pins me down. I feel his cock at my entrance, the head of it thick and weeping. He looks me in the eyes as he hovers there. And then, with the same gentleness with which he fingered me, he sinks into me.
I gasp. He’s huge but it’s not painful. My head tosses back as he bottoms out. To be filled with him like this is an experience that I’ve never had before. I don’t know what to do with it aside from wrap my legs around him, pull him tight against me until he’s pressing deep.
James stays close to me as he rides me hard. We hold to each other, our grips tight and our breaths panting together. It’s as though we’re trying to hold to the moment—or maybe that’s just me. I lose myself in the pleasure he drives into me, the pulsing feeling that weaves through my body on every thrust, every hard, hard slide of his cock inside me. He touches places even Marc never did, he brings me to ecstasy much quicker.
“Don’t stop—don’t stop—”
He doesn’t. He doesn’t stop even as I’m clenching around his cock, crying out. My nails dig into his hands and he never lets go. No, he buries his face in my neck, grunting as the cadence of his hips smooths out to long, strong strokes. His back bows and he careens inside me, driving me closer to another edge.
Seduction… that’s what I brought him here for. A naive part of me wishes this were genuine.
Chapter Five
James
I don’t have one-night stands. Even before Sarah, I took women out on dates—courted them, I guess if you wanna use old-ass terms like that.
So, I’m waking up from my first one-night stand, in a place that’s not my own, wondering what the hell I was thinking. Looking over to where Lena sleeps, her shoulders rising and falling softly, I question why I didn’t just accept her coffee and when, she came on to me, just stick to my guns and push her away, leaving her to sleep off her alcohol.
Because you were lonely, and she was lonely, and the last woman you touched is six feet under.
Thanks, me. I guess we’re being an asshole to ourselves today.
Groaning, I look up at the ceiling. The scent of her clings to the air. I feel the warmth of her beside me and it just serves to remind me that I haven’t had another person in bed with me since Sarah. This was a mistake. I should have never come inside here and, despite the fact that Sarah’s gone, it feels wrong to have been with another woman so soon after her.
Worse still that I liked it.
I sit up, pushing my fingers through my hair. I try to shake the guilt, but it doesn’t work. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t have liked being here. Just because it was the first time in forever since I’d felt something…
“James?”
Lena rolls over, bare chest, messy hair, and all. I avert my eyes.
“Hey. Morning.”
“Hmm…”
She reaches out to me, as if trying to pull me close to her. I pull away from her instead and shake my head.
“I need to go,” I tell her. I’m already out of the bed, digging around for my jeans and a shirt to put on.
“Oh. Do you want breakfast or something? I can make eggs and toast…”
“No.” My tone is harsher than it needs to be, and I know it, but if I say yes to that, what more will I say yes to? “No, I need to go. This was…”
This was, what, exactly?
Lena watches me from the bed as I get dressed. There’s a sadness in her eyes that’s a little different from the sadness that was in it yesterday, while she was at the bar. I can’t really put my finger on it, though, so I shove my feet in my boots and do up my belt buckle.
“Listen,” I tell her. “I don’t do like… this. Breakfast after the fact. Pretending like this is something when it’s not. Last night, I had… fun. But this was a one-time thing. Especially since you’re a Viper girl.”
Lena stares at me, worrying her lip between her teeth. She looks like she wants to say something more, but I don’t get to know what that something is. She nods, pulling her comforter up around her chest, covering herself.
“Of course. No worries. No strings attached.”
Her voice is a little shaky. I think that I’ve hurt her feelings—but, of course, I have. No woman ever goes into something like this really thinking that it’s just going to be a one and done thing. Women get attached and she was alone on her dead boyfriend’s birthday, for fuck’s sake.
I know that, if I let my guilt win over, I’ll end up staying here, and staying here is the last thing that I want to do. I grab my keys and give her a nod.
“Well… Bye then.”
“Bye.”
It’s a shameful ride back onto my side of town. My actions aren’t fair to Lena, but there’s nothing I can do about that now. It was a one-time like, like I said. She only walked into my bar because she needed a drink to pass her dead boyfriend’s birthday. If I see her again, it’ll be because it’s intentional.
I don’t intend to see her again, however. I intend to leave her in my past the same way I’ve left every other regrettable thing in my past.
Chapter Six
Lena
My trailer is silent when James leaves. I sit there in bed, just staring at the doorframe he walked through. I didn’t think that he would be hooked after a night—but his pushing me away so stubbornly was jarring.
I almost want to cry. I can feel the lump in my throat, the stinging in my eyes. My sorrow tempts itself in the clenching of my chest, but I don’t allow myself to cry. That would be silly, after all. James isn’t a man that I want, he’s just a man that I’m using. It’s my own fault for letting myself feel a little too much during our night together.
The thing that should, and eventually does, worry me more than James is Marc. I know that he won’t like that I don’t have a lot to report to him. I saw nothing worth telling about when I was at the bar last night, and while I gave James a taste of my body, I know it’s going to take more than that before he’s eating out of the palm of my hand, and Marc’s not a patient man.
He’ll want to see me today, ask about last night and how much I learned. I’ll need to be presentable for him, so I push through my melancholy and push myself out of my bed to shower away his scent and the evidence of our night together. I still feel the aching throb from where he was between my legs. There’s a phantom pleasure there from knowing how good it was and from having actually wanted him…
Once I’m done with my shower, I wrap the towel around me. I plan to get dressed, head over to the Snake Pit, and talk to Marc.
“Up bright and early, I see.”
I jump. Looks like I don’t actually have to go very far to see Marc; he’s already here, sitting on my bed. One of the downsides to someone else having the key to your place.
“Hey, Marc.” I walk in, intent on getting dressed. Marc grabs me by the arm and pulls me over to him.
“How’d last night go?” he asks me. “Got word from one of my boys a Grizzly waltzed his way in here and didn’t leave last night. You got him?”
I don’t look at him. “Yeah. I brought him back here. We slept together.”
Marc chuckles. “Good. Good. What’d you learn? What info did you get?”
This is the thing that’s going to either make or break my day—how Marc reacts to what I did or didn’t get as far as information goes.
“Not a lot. Not much of anything,” I say. “It was a slow night last night. I wanted to bait him.”
Marc tilts his head. “So, you let him fuck you, but you didn’t get anything out of it?”
“It’s going to take a little time…”
“I want results, Lena,” he says, gripping my jaw. “You spend a whole night with him and get nothing out of him? Did I send you out just for you to get fucked then, huh?”
I grip his hand, trying to ease the hold. I look into his eyes and hope the plea there reaches some part of him that might still want to keep me safe, unharmed
, or at least some part of him that doesn’t actively seek to cause me harm.
“I can get you the information,” I tell him. “I just need to work him over more. He’s stubborn, he’s still sad because of his fiancé…”
“I don’t give a fuck about his sob story, Lena.” He tosses me off of him. “What I give a fuck about is bringing the fucker down.”
“If you give me time, I can give you whatever you need to bring his whole organization down.” I grasp at straws, knowing the likelihood of accomplishing that is slim, but I need to give him something to calm him down. It’s so hard to get him to chill once he gets going.
